R

1
RJ Part IPhonology at the segment level

• assimilation
• vowel harmony
• vowel quality and quantity

2
RJ Part IISuprasegmental (Prosodic) Phonology

• syllable structure
• stress and metrics
• tone and intonation

3
Domains are importantin Prosodic Phonology

• After he ate my cat Freddy took a nap.
• Whats that in the road ahead?
• My neighbors the Finks are driving me crazy.
• In these utterances, depending on where one
• phrase ends and the other begins, we get very
• different readings.
• the span of a rule

4
Inventory of Prosodic Domains

• I Intonation Phrase
• ? ? Phonological Phrase
• PW PW PW Phonological Word
• Ft Ft Metrical Foot
• ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Syllable
• To.day she ate a sand.wich

5
Chapter 9

• The Syllable

6
Is the Syllable a Linguistic Unit?

• A French game Verlan (from lenvers, the wrong
  side)
• French Verlan
• gamin gamE? mE?ga kid (masc)
• gamine gamin minga kid (fem)
• copain kopE? pE?ko mate (masc)
• copine kopin pinko mate (fem)
• francais frA?sE ______ French (masc)
• francaise frA?sez ______ French (fem)
• fumer fyme ______ to smoke
• finir finir ______ to finish

7
Why is the syllable important?

• A vowel is long syllable finally but short before
  a voiceless consonant.
• aIs krim ice cream aI? skrim I scream
• A voiceless stop is aspirated syllable initially,
  otherwise not.
• aIs kHrim aI skrim

8
Why is the syllable important?

• Syllabicity determines how we (and a speech
  synthesizer) pronounce acronyms
• UNESCO
• SCUBA
• NLRB
• But consider 3 segment acronyms, which involve
• more than just syllable structure PLO, IRA, IRS,
  INS

9
Early Words

• 11 months 16 months
• pH? ball k _at_akHi cookie
• pQ book ???Q flower
• h?k?Ha key n?mQ Simon
• 15 months
• bQ? bird Note the common
• k?? girl syllable structure.
• ??m?a moon Syllable structure
  licenses segments.

10
Japanese borrowings from English

• Christmas kurisumasu
• text tekisuto
• dress doresu
• glass __________
• disc __________
• Japanese and English differ in syllable structure
• Japanese does not have consonant clusters

11
The Core Syllable

• ?
• O N
• C V
• ? - syllable
• N(ucleus) - most sonorous sound (peak of acoustic
  energy) usually a vowel
• O(nset) - segment(s) that precede the nucleus

12
Scale of Sonority

• vowels
• liquids
• nasals
• obstruents
• hhhhhhhhhhhelp
• heeeeeeeeeeelp

13
The Core Syllable (2)

• some languages have only CV syllables
• the CV syllable is found in every language
• the CV syllable characterizes child language
  acquisition
• (recall Jakobsons association of language
  acquisition and feature universals)

14
The Coda

• ?
• O N Cd
• b U k
• Cd - Coda segment(s) that follow the nucleus

15
The Rime

• pale pink petunias
• same onset only
• book, took, look, cook
• same nucleus and coda
• rhyming is psychologically real to the speaker
• suggests that nucleus and coda are a constituent

16
The Rime (2)

• ?
• O R(ime)
• N Cd
• b U k

17
Basic Syllable Typology

• ON ONCd NCd N
• _____ _______ _______ _______
• _____ _______ _______ _______
• _____ _______ _______ _______
• _____ _______ _______ _______
• Draw the trees for these words

18
Deriving Syllable Structure

• assuming CV as the basic syllable type we can
  derive the others
• a. C ? ?/___ V gives V alone
• b. ? ? C/V ___ gives CVC
• a b gives VC
• Hypothesis VC syllable is the most complex
  because it is derived by 2 rules
• Claim VC will occur less frequently in
  languages of the world

19
Implicational Hierarchy of Syllable Structure

• if a language has a VC structure
• then it will have CVC and V structures
• if it has CVC and V structures
• then it will have CV structures
• Look at the language sample on p. 247

20
Complex Nuclei

• How do we fit bi?t or baIt into the
  structure?
• ?
• O R
• N Cd
• X X X X
• b i? t

21
Complex Onsets wksht Table 1

• ?
• O R(ime)
• N Cd
• X X X X

22
Constraints on Complex Onsets

• ?
• O R(ime)
• N Cd
• Obstr Liq X X
• Does this structure explain the onset constraint?

23
The Sonority Scale (revisited)

• 4 vowels most sonorous
• 3 liquids (and glides?)
• 2 nasals
• 1 obstruents least sonorous
• Sonority Sequencing
• The sonority profile of the syllable must rise
  until it peaks and then fall.

24
Grammatical Ungrammatical Sonority Profiles

• C C V C C C V C
• p r u f r p u f
  

wksht Table 2
25
Minimal Sonority Distance

• English
• p r 1 3 3-12
• g l 1 3 3-12
• Greek
• p n 1 2 2-11
• k s 1 1 1-10
• p t 1 1 1-10
• Minimal Sonority Distance for English onsets is
  2, for Greek 0

26
Conclusions

• The Sonority Sequencing Constraint is universal.
• Minimal Sonority Distance is a parameter that
  must be set for each language.